Church Girl Gone Wild (14 page)

I lay momentarily dazed with all my memories pinging me like a damn Highlander going through that quickening thing. I hated falling asleep because I'd wake up and have to remember everything all over again. Bleach, urine, and the lingering smell of mystery meat surrounded me. It was taco day and the brown goop they drizzled into stale, tasteless flour they called soft taco wraps smelled like week-old grease and left a taste in your mouth like licking a sweaty armpit. That smell would linger in your hair, clothes, and in the air for days. I hated smelling food, let alone crappy food when I was trying to sleep. I used to hate Taco Bell but I'd kill for it now; hell I'd pay just to lick the floor of a Taco Bell. We were only allowed to have soft shells because some chick ages ago managed to stab someone in the eye with a damn shard from a taco shell. You'd be amazed at what the hell you could do with something as simple as bread or taco shells.

What I missed more than anything was privacy and peace and quiet. Someone was always watching or peeking or creeping somewhere. Simon says everyone needed to shut up and be still. They needed to hand out ball-gags or radios with headphones at night. The lights came on at seven a.m. no matter what and they shut off twelve hours later no matter what. Those twelve hours when the lights were off meant sitting in my cinderblock cubbyhole trying not to go stir crazy. At home I'd have a fit if the water was drip, drip, dripping in the sink onto a dish or if a clock was ticking too loud. A car with too much bass would have sent me through the roof. At home I couldn't even lie my butt down and attempt sleeping if I had to pee.

Prison will knock all that out of you in a couple of days. Now I had the soothing white noise of coughing, snoring, farting, lesbian sex, self-sex or “I want to do a million pushups” type breathing and sleep grunting all coming out a megaphone. Shitting was something you'd have better gotten out of the way before lights out because no one wanted to hear the toilets flush all night. If you just so happened to be the one that dropped a deuce in the middle of the night you and everyone would have to smell it all night because flushing could get you jumped in the morning. There were a few times when someone's insides would smell so rotten you could hear the girls begging for that heffa to flush and she wouldn't. Best believe she got jumped in the morning for stinking up the place just the same as if she'd have flushed.

The toilets flushed with the same magnified whooshing ferocity like those airplane toilets. They could probably take off an arm. I'd made a note to try flushing my arm next if I wanted to send myself to medical. They were probably designed that way because prison food all by itself would turn you into a clogged brick layer. Candy, chips, and cup noodles from the commissary made me feel “regular” in more ways than one. No one put money in my commissary and it would be another month before I'd get assigned to a work detail. That was just another thing that made Aeron feel like a safety blanket made out of scolding hot chainmail.

Whenever I'd fall asleep I'd dream of every single thing I missed and it'd make me feel “world sick.” That was something like homesick but worse. Whenever I'd sleep, Aeron would take the opportunity to let it be known that as long as I shared this cell with her, it meant sharing my body, too. Lord, I didn't know why on first day in after intake, I didn't just walked up in there set my sights on the biggest chick and start swinging away. That's what the girl beside me did after we got stripped down and examined from our roota to our tootas and released into the wild. I might have gotten beat back along with a mark on my record and a bad reputation with the COs but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be another woman's property.

It was bad that Aeron could protect me better than any CO could, but that was reality. Everyone, COs included, had a “leave me alone and I'll leave you alone” policy. The COs' main concern was walking out at the end of their shift with the same numbers of holes they'd walked in with. Usually if there were black or “other” they were harsh as hell because most of us were black or other and they didn't want to relate; or they were just trying to do their eight and hit the gate.

The “good old boys” were a small band of white guards who lived for coming to work and making our lives hell. I could imagine them at home kicking aside empty Budweiser cans with their steel-toed cowboy boots. They'd probably stand in the mirror slapping themselves just to get amped for their workday. The CO I nicknamed Fingerbangs fell in this group. You couldn't tell me she didn't have wolf in her family. Neander Knuckles could probably curl and style her finger bangs if she wanted to, but she was actually known for fingering inmates. Willingly or unwillingly, Fingerbangs didn't really care.

Fingerbangs, the good old boys, and Officer Blakely were dirty. And if you just so happened to have two dirty guards on watch at the same time when something went down there wasn't much of anything that could save you. Keeping up with who was clean and who was dirty was the trickiest part. A clean CO could go dirty in the blink of an eye, and a dirty one could go clean setting you up in the process just to save face and play the hero. We were all segregated into our units depending on race. We'd actually managed to step back into the early sixties. It kept the Latinas from fighting with the sisters; and all the white folk stuck together during scuffles but they still separated themselves by their standards. The Reginas were these three white girls, Beckman, Rebecca, and Carly. You'd think they called themselves that because Regina means “queen” in Latin, but no, they just liked the movie
Mean Girls
and they acted as such. Everyone else just called them “the Beckys.”

I used to carry a Bible; until one of the Beckys bumped into me.

Taking one step back I held up my hand. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean
—
”

She stormed toward me. Amazingly there wasn't a CO at either of end of the long, narrow hallway with the mirror
-
perfect white floor.

“Am I a what? I don't know what
—
”

This little she
-
man, mean
-
looking CO appeared out of nowhere. Her face was turned up in an ugly frown as she stared between me and Beckman. She looked like she smelled sour milk twenty
-
four hours a day and, as a result, her face was permanently scrunched up from the smell.

From that day forward things went missing or got destroyed all because Beckman thought I was carrying or hiding candy or goodies or whatever she was looking for. I had a fourteen-karat gold cross around my neck: a gift from my mom for my sixteenth birthday. I got jumped in the showers for that when Beckman cornered me asking if I'd found her candy. I didn't even know I was supposed to have been looking, but she took my necklace as consolation. Everybody always wanted to mess with the “Church Girl,” steal from the “Church Fish”; they knew “Church Mouse” wouldn't fight back. I wasn't made for nobody's prison or jail. I wasn't even a criminal and they knew it.

“Go 'head, princess. Tell momma she the G-O-A-T.” Aeron lay down on her side in the shadows facing me from the bunk across the cell. A smug grin was spreading across her face. This was routine with her. First she'd take it, then she'd gloat about it. Fighting her was pointless. It was best to do whatever she wanted so she wouldn't release me or put the word out that I was unclaimed. That would pretty much have me up for grabs like a human yard sale.

Aeron wasn't that bad as long as I stayed on the right side of the invisible fine line that everyone had to walk around her. She had a soft, oval-shaped face, with strong, high-arched brows. She honestly didn't even look like she belonged locked up.

Block 0039, dorm thirty-nine, no matter how you referred to it or tried to spiffy up the name, it was my new home and I wasn't with the black women. They'd moved me out of Neverland away from Reynoo and stuck me in Spanish Harlem. I was out of my element and the black chicks would give me angry side stares like I was a sellout; the Latinas were mad I was invading their space. It was all the politics I'd missed in high school with none of the perks.

“Well am I the greatest or no? I know your ass didn't fall asleep that fast,” Aeron whispered from across the cell.

Sighing, I rolled over so I could look up at her across the arm's distance separating us. She was doing her Morticia Addams, sitting up just enough so the light could shine across the upper half of her face. In another lifetime and another place she probably could have passed for a model or some “it” television personality, just like I passed for a business owner. No one would ever see the aggressive bully she could turn into unless they stared into her eyes. Those dark brown stormy windows to her soul were always angry, as if she were coming from an argument or on her way to handle one. She had a way of squinting and raising her eyebrow like she was just daring you to say something, almost anticipating a reason to show you she could whoop your ass. From what I could see with the little bit of lighting there was, that was the look she was giving me.

Defeated, I shifted my cotton prison uniform back on my body and made my way off of the makeshift pallet on the floor. There was no telling what she was thinking and that in itself frazzled my nerves making me move in short jerky motions as I got up and went to her rack. We didn't have real bunks or beds. It was probably a way to save the tax payers money and it also cut down on places to hide contraband or stuff to kill your cellmate. I used to vote and be all for any congressman or legislation that talked about cutting the cost of the prison system. Those decisions were biting me in the ass now, literally as I pulled my thin pillow up off the floor. If you held two fingers up side by side that's about how thick my pillow was; double that and you had my mattress. Lay a four-finger-thick mattress on a slab of concrete that stuck out the wall and you have a rack.

“Yes, you are the greatest of all time, Aeron. Can I get in bed please?” This was our custom. Aeron was bigger and stronger, she was highly respected by the other females in the unit, and as long as I was hers, as long as I was with her, I was safe.

I rubbed my knuckles back and forth over the three inches of beard hanging off my chin. Looking down at all the neon blue lights in the Beemer's dashboard made me feel like I'd actually accomplished smoething. Still I debated on whether I was really about to go through with this shit.
To hell with it, I been good long enough. Time to splurge.

I went into the Uno's in Norfolk ignoring the stares and looks of interest from the single girl galley at the bar. Aside from my mini Rick Ross on my chin, they ain't have to look to let me know I looked like an appetizer on two legs. My black polo fit just tight enough to show I was cut up but not too tight. Ralph Lauren Black Label was my new thing. I wasn't one for having cartoon shit all over my clothes outside of my J 11s, and they only fell in that category because Jordan wore them in
Space Jam.

I eye checked a couple of niggas at a back table burning some stank cigars. With all the women at the bar they were staring too hard to be anything but gay or wanting trouble.

“Let me get a voodoo lady,” I asked the bartender.

“I'll be your voodoo lady, hoodoo woman. Damn.”

I smiled at the politely at the pretty thing sitting beside the bar. The bartender was pretty much looking lost. After two precisely proportioned Courvoisier, triple sec, and lemon juice concoctions later I was feeling nice. They were a little too sour from her throwing in an entire shot of lemon juice instead of a splash but that just kept me from tossing them back. After about an hour I checked my watch and went back outside with the smell of garlic knots and Buffalo wings all up in my clothes. To anyone watching it would seem like an ordinary Saturday night, but I'd been on my mad scientist flow lately working on a master plan.

“Dontay?”

I jumped at the sound of my name.

She stepped out of the shadows like she'd hitched a ride and hopped off with the last warm breeze.

“That would be me.” I recovered from that millisecond of fear offering her a lopsided smile. The way she'd said my name sounded almost like Eva and I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. The last thing I needed to do was spook myself and miss out on a good night. I didn't need to think about Eva. I needed to relax.

“Well, did you miss me or what?” she asked with a flirtatious pout.

Fayme looked exactly the way her name sounded, like she could be seriously addictive, expensive, or just plain dangerous. I raised my cigarillo lighting it with a match and taking a long slow methodic draw before releasing the clouds. I didn't want to answer her right away. Sometimes it was just best to let a woman have that air of uncertainty. Plus she'd work harder later on just to make sure I had a reason to miss her; that and her pouts were sexy as fuck.

Fayme grabbed the front of my shirt pulling me toward her as she took a step closer. My eyes were drawn to her big, glossy pink chocolate-mint scented lips of hers. They advertised themselves on her face so well I could hear them screaming, “With lips like this you know the pussy's perfect.”

Fayme puckered up and sucked every white wisp of smoke from in between my lips sending my mind into porno subspace. Her black wool trench coat narrowed at her tiny waist and I knew she was naked underneath. My brain was trying to send some kind of warning signal out but blood was already bullet trainin' itself to other areas, diluting the message.

Even the way she blinked up at me through her lashes made me start to get rock solid. She started massaging me through my jeans and I looked past her toward the doors to see if anyone was coming or going. Fayme wasn't like anyone I'd ever met. She thrived on sex, her skin glowed from it, and just being near her made me want her even more. She squeaked when I pressed forward forcing her to take blind backward baby steps in her heels. Dropping my cigarillo I bit my upper lip while stalking her. A tiny gasp escaped from in between her gloss-slick lips when I slipped my arm around her waist. I navigated her into the bushes until her back was flush against the grainy brick wall of the restaurant.

“You have lost your mind. What happened to wine and dinner at the hotel and—”

She shut up when I slid double her usual fee into the pocket of her thin coat. I was already breaking one of my rules by being out in public with her. My jeans were getting uncomfortably tight as I strained against them. Rule number two flew out the window when she slid her arms around my neck and pressed her hips forward grinding into me. Fayme didn't have a problem with kissing but it was a rule I usually stuck to. She lifted her lips up expecting, waiting, pressing into me begging for me to kiss her. The warmth from her fingers brushed my stomach, snaked down the front of my jeans gripping me tight and I groaned. My mind unraveled itself with the motion of stroking me working me better than I did myself.

“It feels like you missed me,” she whispered. “I won't believe it until you show me.”

Lifting her up I undid the belt of her coat with one hand as I pressed my lips hard against hers. She moaned against my lips and I entwined my tongue with hers, tasting sweet cocoa and mint. She was already wet and ready; I slid two fingers inside moaning my damn self when they were squeezed tight together. As good as her lips felt I couldn't help thinking about who else they might have been on or if she'd swallowed and sucked someone else before meeting me. Careful so the leaves wouldn't rustle, I set her down and turned her toward the wall. My dick was pulsing painfully in my hand when I freed it from my jeans and I said to hell with it. I bent down just enough to let me slide the tip along her lips wetting myself up. When I pressed forward plunging deep into her in one stroke we both hissed at the shock of skin-to-skin contact.

Fayme's eyebrows came together and her forehead creased up as she made that “hurt so good” face. Her eyes were closed tight as she pressed the side of her face against the brick and moaned, “Oh, shiiiiit, Dontay.”

I stroked her deeper and faster. We were on my dime and somewhere too public to waste time so if she didn't get hers at least she'd gotten paid. She threw her ass back hard meeting every thrust and my breathing turned into raspy gasps for air. I was seconds away from exploding when Fayme slipped around and down taking me deep into her throat.

She was one of many, but she was the best. Back in the day I'd probably seen a different girl every other week. The only reason I even started was because one of my homeboys had some strippers at a party when we were in high school and they paid her to break me off. I was the virgin-wallflower with no game. They thought they were doing me a favor by payin' for me to get some ass. Eva didn't know anything about it. No one did. I'd been taking it easy lately with Eva going to prison and everything but the need for my secret sexploits was still there.